bahamianpride
05-07-07, - 12:36 PM
A new way of viewing race
http://www.thenassauguardian.com/editorial/317875685422845.php
Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh lord why don't we?
Paul McCartney and
Stevie Wonder, "Ebony and Ivory"
"Still Wrong Now" / "So Sad, So Dumb"
So why don't we? Oh Lord! Fast forward to early 2007- Fred Mitchell took the mud-slinging offensive, claiming that racism still exists and that putting the Ingraham-Symonette ticket into power would haul our tails right back into the dark ages (or the white ages?) of the UBP oligarchy. Symonette, who is allegedly "white" and is one half of the FNM's chiaroscuro duo, responded that the PLP was playing this race card out of desperation and that we should not speak of race in The Bahamas as there is no longer any racism. Now that the FNM has "baked the crab" and won the 2007 elections, now that Hubert Ingraham and Brent Symonette are the Salt 'n Pepper PM and DPM, what does this mean for our sense of race in The Bahamas?
Let me get right to the point – I believe that Bahamian conversations about race and other issues are plagued by the binary thinking of either/or. We are either saved or heathen, PLP or FNM, Bahamian or Haitian, Saxon or Valley, black or white. We need to get beyond either/or to a philosophy of both/and that accounts for the complexities of identities, ideas and experiences.
Let us not fool ourselves, race matters in The Bahamas, in often subtle and insidious ways. We need more painfully honest, carefully considered arguments and less superficial, misconstrued invocations of Martin Luther King, the name-and-blame games and naively dangerous strategies of colour-blindness. Racism certainly persists (though dressed in new clothes) in The Bahamas and the PLP certainly manipulates race as a desperate political tactic, as does the FNM in different ways. At the same time, it is also ridiculous and irresponsible to claim that we could ever return to the UBP era and, even more disturbing, that racism is dead and we should just shut up about it.
It is interesting that a number of radio talk-show callers, even those that claimed to be PLPs, expressed great disappointment with the PLP "UBP scare tactics" and, it seems, voted accordingly. I am very concerned that the PLP's claims about the UBP return flies in the face of the legacy of the first PLP government, which facilitated the emergence of the black middle-class. We can only wait and see if the UBP nightmare becomes a reality.
But it isn't only the PLP that plays the race card. While the PLP ceremonies in honour of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade were poorly planned and thinly-veiled campaign events, the FNM has made no public statement whatsoever on the Bicentenary. Let's hope they rehabilitate this oversight as a government. My point is that both the FNM's silence and their statements about "salt n pepper" racial harmony are also race card strategies.
Racism as a concept and practice is profoundly misunderstood in The Bahamas and I realise that this is a great part of its effectiveness. It is not simply racial epithets or interpersonal antipathy, which tends to be grounds for the cry of "reverse racism." Racism has to do with systems of power, complex relationships, scripted by the idea of race in concert with class. In fact class is so central to how race works, that the two words should be attached: race-and-class.
Racism naturalises and normalises certain ideas and values that serve as 'backative' (support) for those with power. Racism, in fact, allows many white people to say, "It doesn't affect me" or "I don't even think about race." This is what happens when you both lack a social conscience and have the privilege to live in a Sandyport world away from the daily darts of race and class oppression. We can also talk about when black people internalise racism and use their power to systematically oppress other black people. Racism is quite savvy at camouflaging itself, blending in with the ho-hum day-to-day. What we need to do is identify and call out the disguise.
"No Turning Black"
(Where's your grandmother?)
"Whiteness" in the Caribbean is interesting. When I interviewed Brent Symonette in May 2005, he claimed not to know of his black heritage. In this Bahamaland there are also people as dark as I am who function, for all intents and purposes, as "socially white." They mainly have white friends, they frequent the spots over P.I. (Paradise Island) or way out West that expats like and they won't admit that they're black. It's very strange.
But Caribbean "near-whites" are interesting. They often "pass" for white for the social (and economic) profits. Not-quite not-white (lick a da tar brush). In Puerto Rico (and I believe Cuba), with its complicated and sometimes disturbing perceptions of race, there is a saying that goes, "¿Y tu abuela a dónde está?" or "Where is your grandmother?" In other words, no matter how "white" you may look, it is entirely possible that your grandmother is black. "White" Bahamians who disavow their black blood suffer from self-hatred, need healing and, worst of all, shame our shared grandmothers.
Like Conch Salad
One thing about The Bahamas is we don't seem to have a space in this discourse on race-and-class for mixed identities, and for non-black, non-"white" Bahamian identities. What about the Chinese and Greek Bahamians? What about Bahamians of Indian, Indian-Trinidadian or Indian-Guyanese, Filipino and other heritages? And all in between. We have whole islands and settlements of mixed people - look at Long Island (though many "think they white"). We so potcake in The Bahamas, it ain' even funny.
Charles Carter often says that if your family was in The Bahamas circa 1900, then you are likely related to everyone in this country. The bottom line of what he is saying is that family, and therefore race-and-class relations in The Bahamas are amazingly complex. Whether we want to admit it or not we are each other's business. No one has been spared.
Growing up in The Bahamas, I was considered funny-looking. My father is Bahamian, my mother is Trinidadian and my racial heritage is African, Carib, East Indian, Spanish and French (a typical Trini mix). My "other" ancestries, clearly evidenced in my hair texture, eye shape and cheekbones, are sometimes a bit odd for Bahamians. In other parts of the Caribbean, I may be called "dougla," "callaloo," maybe "moro," maybe "Garifuna." But there's not quite a term for me in The Bahamas. I am a black man of multiracial heritage - blackness, for me, is a conch salad.
In the conch salad of colors, classes and ideas that is The Bahamas, the FNM has tended to take a position that claims to offer racial harmony, while naively and dangerously ignoring the persistence of actual racial and class inequalities. I hope that as the new government, they will take a more proactive and productive role in racial healing.
This healing demands new talks for race-and-class. We need a language that can accommodate all of our complexities, a language that can acknowledge and integrate our mix-up mix-up without playing into the belief that "mixed" is better than "black," or into the grossly oversimplified strategy of "color-blindness." Everyone sees color - our infinity of shades is what makes us beautiful.
What we need to create are as many opportunities as possible to educate ourselves about the race-and-class diversity of our population and history. We need both academic and non-academic forums, "safe spaces" in which we can discuss these issues with the shared goal of healing. We need far more forums for cultural sharing to impact youth on a national level about, for instance, the importance of Greek-Bahamian and Chinese-Bahamian traditions in our national culture. We need far more non-black Bahamians to take responsibility and higher stakes, and to be honest, in the conversation about race-and-class. For example, I'm thinking of people like Helen Klonaris and Godfrey Kelly who have made wonderful contributions.
As Aurora Ferguson reminds us in her magnificent prose-poem "Sea": "Our complexion is mocha, cocoa, coffee, cassava bread, potato bread, cinnamon, honey, mango skinned, conchie joe, reddish brown." Like our rainbow skin, our experiences, ideological positions, our desires, span a both/and spectrum of shades, complexities and contradictions.
Let's break off and run that gamut.
n Christian Campbell is a poet, cultural critic and journalist. For more information, see www.myspace.com/christiancampbellguerrer
http://www.thenassauguardian.com/editorial/317875685422845.php
Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh lord why don't we?
Paul McCartney and
Stevie Wonder, "Ebony and Ivory"
"Still Wrong Now" / "So Sad, So Dumb"
So why don't we? Oh Lord! Fast forward to early 2007- Fred Mitchell took the mud-slinging offensive, claiming that racism still exists and that putting the Ingraham-Symonette ticket into power would haul our tails right back into the dark ages (or the white ages?) of the UBP oligarchy. Symonette, who is allegedly "white" and is one half of the FNM's chiaroscuro duo, responded that the PLP was playing this race card out of desperation and that we should not speak of race in The Bahamas as there is no longer any racism. Now that the FNM has "baked the crab" and won the 2007 elections, now that Hubert Ingraham and Brent Symonette are the Salt 'n Pepper PM and DPM, what does this mean for our sense of race in The Bahamas?
Let me get right to the point – I believe that Bahamian conversations about race and other issues are plagued by the binary thinking of either/or. We are either saved or heathen, PLP or FNM, Bahamian or Haitian, Saxon or Valley, black or white. We need to get beyond either/or to a philosophy of both/and that accounts for the complexities of identities, ideas and experiences.
Let us not fool ourselves, race matters in The Bahamas, in often subtle and insidious ways. We need more painfully honest, carefully considered arguments and less superficial, misconstrued invocations of Martin Luther King, the name-and-blame games and naively dangerous strategies of colour-blindness. Racism certainly persists (though dressed in new clothes) in The Bahamas and the PLP certainly manipulates race as a desperate political tactic, as does the FNM in different ways. At the same time, it is also ridiculous and irresponsible to claim that we could ever return to the UBP era and, even more disturbing, that racism is dead and we should just shut up about it.
It is interesting that a number of radio talk-show callers, even those that claimed to be PLPs, expressed great disappointment with the PLP "UBP scare tactics" and, it seems, voted accordingly. I am very concerned that the PLP's claims about the UBP return flies in the face of the legacy of the first PLP government, which facilitated the emergence of the black middle-class. We can only wait and see if the UBP nightmare becomes a reality.
But it isn't only the PLP that plays the race card. While the PLP ceremonies in honour of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade were poorly planned and thinly-veiled campaign events, the FNM has made no public statement whatsoever on the Bicentenary. Let's hope they rehabilitate this oversight as a government. My point is that both the FNM's silence and their statements about "salt n pepper" racial harmony are also race card strategies.
Racism as a concept and practice is profoundly misunderstood in The Bahamas and I realise that this is a great part of its effectiveness. It is not simply racial epithets or interpersonal antipathy, which tends to be grounds for the cry of "reverse racism." Racism has to do with systems of power, complex relationships, scripted by the idea of race in concert with class. In fact class is so central to how race works, that the two words should be attached: race-and-class.
Racism naturalises and normalises certain ideas and values that serve as 'backative' (support) for those with power. Racism, in fact, allows many white people to say, "It doesn't affect me" or "I don't even think about race." This is what happens when you both lack a social conscience and have the privilege to live in a Sandyport world away from the daily darts of race and class oppression. We can also talk about when black people internalise racism and use their power to systematically oppress other black people. Racism is quite savvy at camouflaging itself, blending in with the ho-hum day-to-day. What we need to do is identify and call out the disguise.
"No Turning Black"
(Where's your grandmother?)
"Whiteness" in the Caribbean is interesting. When I interviewed Brent Symonette in May 2005, he claimed not to know of his black heritage. In this Bahamaland there are also people as dark as I am who function, for all intents and purposes, as "socially white." They mainly have white friends, they frequent the spots over P.I. (Paradise Island) or way out West that expats like and they won't admit that they're black. It's very strange.
But Caribbean "near-whites" are interesting. They often "pass" for white for the social (and economic) profits. Not-quite not-white (lick a da tar brush). In Puerto Rico (and I believe Cuba), with its complicated and sometimes disturbing perceptions of race, there is a saying that goes, "¿Y tu abuela a dónde está?" or "Where is your grandmother?" In other words, no matter how "white" you may look, it is entirely possible that your grandmother is black. "White" Bahamians who disavow their black blood suffer from self-hatred, need healing and, worst of all, shame our shared grandmothers.
Like Conch Salad
One thing about The Bahamas is we don't seem to have a space in this discourse on race-and-class for mixed identities, and for non-black, non-"white" Bahamian identities. What about the Chinese and Greek Bahamians? What about Bahamians of Indian, Indian-Trinidadian or Indian-Guyanese, Filipino and other heritages? And all in between. We have whole islands and settlements of mixed people - look at Long Island (though many "think they white"). We so potcake in The Bahamas, it ain' even funny.
Charles Carter often says that if your family was in The Bahamas circa 1900, then you are likely related to everyone in this country. The bottom line of what he is saying is that family, and therefore race-and-class relations in The Bahamas are amazingly complex. Whether we want to admit it or not we are each other's business. No one has been spared.
Growing up in The Bahamas, I was considered funny-looking. My father is Bahamian, my mother is Trinidadian and my racial heritage is African, Carib, East Indian, Spanish and French (a typical Trini mix). My "other" ancestries, clearly evidenced in my hair texture, eye shape and cheekbones, are sometimes a bit odd for Bahamians. In other parts of the Caribbean, I may be called "dougla," "callaloo," maybe "moro," maybe "Garifuna." But there's not quite a term for me in The Bahamas. I am a black man of multiracial heritage - blackness, for me, is a conch salad.
In the conch salad of colors, classes and ideas that is The Bahamas, the FNM has tended to take a position that claims to offer racial harmony, while naively and dangerously ignoring the persistence of actual racial and class inequalities. I hope that as the new government, they will take a more proactive and productive role in racial healing.
This healing demands new talks for race-and-class. We need a language that can accommodate all of our complexities, a language that can acknowledge and integrate our mix-up mix-up without playing into the belief that "mixed" is better than "black," or into the grossly oversimplified strategy of "color-blindness." Everyone sees color - our infinity of shades is what makes us beautiful.
What we need to create are as many opportunities as possible to educate ourselves about the race-and-class diversity of our population and history. We need both academic and non-academic forums, "safe spaces" in which we can discuss these issues with the shared goal of healing. We need far more forums for cultural sharing to impact youth on a national level about, for instance, the importance of Greek-Bahamian and Chinese-Bahamian traditions in our national culture. We need far more non-black Bahamians to take responsibility and higher stakes, and to be honest, in the conversation about race-and-class. For example, I'm thinking of people like Helen Klonaris and Godfrey Kelly who have made wonderful contributions.
As Aurora Ferguson reminds us in her magnificent prose-poem "Sea": "Our complexion is mocha, cocoa, coffee, cassava bread, potato bread, cinnamon, honey, mango skinned, conchie joe, reddish brown." Like our rainbow skin, our experiences, ideological positions, our desires, span a both/and spectrum of shades, complexities and contradictions.
Let's break off and run that gamut.
n Christian Campbell is a poet, cultural critic and journalist. For more information, see www.myspace.com/christiancampbellguerrer